Amending GRIP Balances

T2
1

I have a new client to our firm. They are an investment holding company. The company receives $10-$15k of eligible dividends each year from Canadian portfolio stock (mostly bank stocks). After going over the company’s tax history I noticed that it never paid out eligible dividends. It only ever paid out non-eligible. Nonetheless, the GRIP balance was zero.

It turns out the previous accountant was preparing the T2s “by hand” (using fillable PDFs) and didn’t even know about GRIP and Schedule 53. As a result, there is no GRIP from all the eligible dividends received going back to 2013 (company was started in 2012 and received its first eligible dividend in the 2013 calendar year (same as tax year)).

I have determined that since 2013 over $70k of eligible dividends were received but never put into GRIP.

It’s very strange because on every T2 return filed, Schedule 3 was properly filled out showing the receipt of eligible dividends and the payment of non-eligible dividends. In all of CRA’s assessments, they never once corrected the GRIP balance based on the obvious data in Schedule 3.

What is the best way to request CRA adjust this? We aren’t looking to amend anything in the T2 apart from simply adding a Schedule 53 to the returns. The client is fine with just taking the GRIP balance and going forward with it. The client is also quite organized so I’m willing to bet they have all the T-Slips/Investment reports issued to the company going back to 2013.

2

File amended returns…

3

You can also send a letter to CRA saying something like: “Upon review of the prior year T2’s as filed we noticed that the Schedules 53 were not properly completed and we hereby submit the corrected schedules for the following years…”

4

Thanks Rein,

That is what I was thinking as well. I knew an obvious solution would be to file amended returns as @BertMulderCGA suggested. However, I don’t have all of the previously filed returns and amending 8 returns would be somewhat onerous when I’m not actually amending anything (the tax software doesn’t even recognize a change since it prepares s.53 by default).

I spoke with a CRA agent this morning and he suggested faxing a letter to the local tax centre with s.3 and s.53 forms for all 8 years enclosed. So that’s what I did.